FOREIGNESS – WALKABOUT – INCANTAMENTO

LA FABBRICA DEL CIOCCOLATO
Foundation for Art, Culture and Entertainment
07 April – 20 May  2018

FOREIGNESS
From an idea of
Ermanno Cristini, Al Fashil,
Franco Marinotti, Luca Scarabelli

WALKABOUT
Simona Barbera, Sergio Breviario, Umberto Cavenago, Gianluca Codeghini, Ermanno Cristini, Carlo Dell’Acqua, Hannes Egger, Elena El Asmar, Ronny Faber Dahl, Gabriela Hess, Michele Lombardelli, M+M, Angelo Mosca, Giancarlo Norese, Luca Pancrazzi, Javier Peñafiel, Luca Scarabelli, Ivana Spinelli, Giovanni Termini, Enzo Umbaca, Alejandro Vidal

INCANTAMENTO
Guido, i’ vorrei che tu e Lapo ed io
fossimo presi per incantamento 
(Dante Alighieri, Liriche)

This adventure comes from the encounter between two projects, Walkabout and Foreignness, and a place, Fabbrica del Cioccolato and the Blenio valley, two autonomous projects that share an interest in translation and in the territory.
Today an artwork’s destiny is to inevitably “roll” through different media and formats, giving rise to a continuous process of codification and transcodification, or rather of translation. Even the territory with its history is subject to cultural as well as functional-economic transformation phenomena, which by gradually changing its identity trigger a sequence of acts of translation.
Yet every translation is an interpretation, and it becomes so when it fails as a mere act of transcodification resulting from “misunderstanding”, as a condition in which translation is regarded as a testimony.
Using testimonies is guidance to our wandering in this place, the Fabbrica del Cioccolato and its valley, a place leading to enchantment. The source of this rapture is its oversizing, its history of transition across different functions — from hydroelectric station to beer factory to chocolate factory to contemporary art centre — and its being in the middle of the mountains, like a body appearing as a sudden deviation, imposing itself on amazed eyes.
Through the weaving of languages the artworks recall each other by suggestion, they sting and influence the side of feelings making it wrong, a deeply destabilising mistake that alters the consolatory certainties of routine.
It is a relationship with the space and the territory as well as between artists and languages; its purpose is to open itself to the derangement of limit and transformation; a derangement ready to be received by the eyes of a witness to set the following stage.

Opening 07 April from 4 Pm
07 April- 20 May 2018
Opening time: Wednesday to Sunday, from 12 Pm to 7 Pm,
or by appointment: requests@chochfact.ch, +41 79 737 44 39

Strada Vecchia 100
CH-6717 Torre Blenio
www.chocfact.ch

FREE ENTRANCE